Why use electronic sheep identification (EID's) for stud and commercial flocks?

Electronic tagging enables instant accurate identification of each animal, greatly speeding up measurement of the many wool and carcase characteristics a producer is seeking, be it for a commercial ewe flock, or a stud producing rams, stud ewes and flock ewes. EID’s have the capacity to greatly accelerate productivity of a commercial or stud flock, including a flock that is being re-built as you recover from the drought.

Have you purchased your (tamper proof or re-usable) electronic tags but have yet to choose your software to read the data? Data-based SheepTrack ™ is very easy to use, and we free you up from any hassle involved, at a very moderate cost. We can re-create the association between the visual tags and electronic tags for you so that within flock management, the electronic tags can be re-used year after year, greatly reducing the cost of tags, or the need to replenish them.

Some States have been providing subsidies for electronic tags, tag reading equipment and software to analyse the data, and now is an ideal time to look at the tags and appropriate software, and get to understand the concepts involved. At first sight it may appear complex, but in reality it is all very simple and logical. In these web pages we go to considerable lengths to expain how the new system works, and some of the pitfalls for the unwary. Information gathered in the Data-based SheepTrack ™ database can be used in it's own right, or exported via spreadsheet for use in Lamplan and MerinoSelect.

For further details of how much the electronic tags, software and associated equipment cost, please don't hesitate to get in touch with us by emailing us. (See 'Contact' page).

 

We can almost guarantee that once a sheep producer has switched to electronic tagging, you will never change back to conventional tags. EID's save you an enormous amount of time and work. With our commercial ewe flock database, we can add on the new tags into your database, and you can delete animals that have died or are being culled. You can use new electronic tags, or send the used tags back to us, we clean them for you and re-create the electronic association with the new years buttons.

Also, more and more, ram buyers are looking for measurements, whether it be ASBVs (Australian Sheep Breeding Values), micron, wool handle measurements, carcase growth rates etc.

New devices are also being developed that should enable breeders to ascertain how many lambs a ewe has suckled, and which lambs suckled to any given ewe, thus enabling identification of highly profitable ewes that produce multiple births, and lambs that have come from a multiple birth mother, no matter how large the property.

Imagine at classing time if you can see all this information in an instant on a computer screen. Stud or flock, you can immediately identify your elite animals, and as soon as possible cull the less productive.

Data-based SheepTrack ™ is keeping abreast of all these developments, already providing the above data as technology makes it available. If you are scanning for eye muscle and fat depth, or employing a classer, you can be paying a lot of wages to authorised scanning experts and sheep classers, and Data-based SheepTrack™ used in conjuction with EID’s dramatically reduces the time these operations take. Our system truly has the capacity to pay for itself in its first year of use.

At the conclusion of a 200 day weigh-in, eye muscle and fat measurement session, a client producing approximately 1000 rams each year, using Data-based SheepTrack™ recently sent us this email:

“Did the scanning yesterday - went like a dream!!!! YEEEHHHHHAAAHHH!!!!

John said that about the fastest you can go is 60 an hour as each ram has 4 measurements taken and he really can't do them much quicker than a minute.

We timed the first hour - 55 done.

The next half hour - 33.

So we did very well.

From memory I worked out we averaged 53 an hour so that is good as now and then we have to stop for something or someone, push more sheep up, toilets etc.......”

Having spent more than twenty years developing Data-based SheepTrack ™ at Keri-Keri Merino Stud in their harsh conditions, near Balranald (NSW), Keri-Keri combines visual appraisal of each animal in combination with measurement, using Data-based SheepTrack ™ .